Does the swf file download to user's PC before it starts playing/How does Flash Files play on user's PC

"In fact, Flash movies (animation) start playing as soon as the first frame is downloaded completely, while the rest of the SWF file downloads in the background. You know those ""this many percent"" displays that long Flash animations put up? We Flash developers call them ""preloaders"", and they're there to prevent the movie from starting before it's largely or completely downloaded, so you don't get stuttering and pauses if the player tries to play frames that aren't downloaded yet

The entire SWF does get downloaded, but play starts before that."

The full flash file is downloaded prior to executing. You won't see anything in your cache when viewing it like that because you're running it locally, it doesn't need to make another copy on the hard disk.